elaine's strange little world

let's have another bad-good-random list, shall we? it's a good way to summarize my life.

( yay, a list! )

never thought i'd say that i enjoyed cooking, but here we are. i'm feeling ever so pleased with myself: made chicken and potatoes, and fish with veggies. the best thing was that it was all very easy and straightforward! the chicken was by far the simplest: take chicken breasts, roll them in a little bit of oil mixed with garlic, dill, and lemon pepper (or whatever other spices you want), put it on foil and add a little more oil, wrap it up in the foil, and bake on 370 for 30 minutes or until it's white all the way through. then, unwrap the foil and bake for 4-5 minutes, turn the breasts over, and bake 4-5 minutes more, just to brown each side.

the potatoes were equally simple, if time consuming: take fingerling or baby potatoes, peel them (the most annoying part), then brown in a small pot or a deep pan with some oil, lots of garlic, and dill. yummy!

the fish was also pretty simple: take tillapia (or catfish, or sole, or any similar white fish), coat it with a thin layer of mayonnaise mixed with spices (garlic and lemon pepper is what i like) and put it on a deep, foil-covered sheet. add some oil, then put in thin onion rings or slices, carrots, broccoli, and canned diced tomatoes (i like the organic ones from trader joe's) with their juice. add a little water, maybe. cover with foil, stick in the oven at 370 for 20 minutes. take it out and check on it: if the veggies are pretty soft, uncover it and put it back in for 10-15 minutes. if they're still hard, cover it again for 10-15, then check again. voila!

so yes, the elaine cooking thing is odd, but i like it! if i make 2 dishes on sunday, i have lunch and dinner for the rest of the week, basically, with frozen stuff to supplement. it's great!

i have a new laptop! weeee! i've never owned a laptop before, so this is hugely exciting. it's pretty great...small but not too tiny to read things, and pretty fast and has a good battery life, as far as i can tell. somewhat nfortunatley, it's running vista, but i couldn't find a laptop i wanted with just xp. ah, well. it's very happy nonetheless.

in a few weeks, i'm going to tucson with my parents to look at condos! yay! i can't wait to have my own place. that's gonna be pretty amazing. and i may possibly get a kitty or two.

i'm trying out the open beta of the new lord of the rings mmorpg. i've never played anything like this before, so i'm not sure how to meet other players or anything like that, but it seems pretty cool so far. my graphics card isn't the greatest, but it's handling most things ok. and my character is great! she's an elven hunter named ithilwen, which means moon as far as i can tell. it's pretty great.

i'm about due for a long, reflective post, but it's not this post (aragorn: but it is not this day! this day we fight!). maybe in a few days? i'm spending a lot more time on the computer, with the laptop and all. hee.

i've written down a list of things i want to do before i move, and one of them is to have a lord of the rings marathon. what do people think about that?

ok, enough randomness. time to make dinner.

i keep forgetting to tell people, but i've been invited to a formal interview at the university of arizona! super exciting, especially since arizona is somewhere between 1 and 3 on my list of places i'd like to be, depending on my mood. the only places i'd like more are possibly berkeley and possibly san diego, although arizona's program seems like a better fit than either of those. i haven't heard back from any other school yet, and it's not like arizona is taking me yet, but this is a great first step.

***

i will, really i will, write about new zealand in more detail. in the mean time, there are some pictures up here. we took about 600 pictures total, so the pictures in the album are just a small fraction. they're in chronoligical order and cover all the stuff we did...they're basically the highlights. so yeah. details to come, enjoy the photos for now.

***

david and i went to the symphony today, to see the moscow soloists in concert, and it was so cool! and they played 3 encore pieces! only russians ever play encores, i've noticed. well, and bands, but no non-russian symphony type performance generally has encores! much fun, and then we ate at max's opera cafe afterwards, and the waiters all sing and there was piano and stuff. so, nice evening.

***

i have enough miles for a free ticket to europe now! maybe i'll go this summer! hehe. just got back from a trip, and i'm already planning another one. silly elaine.

ok, off to bed. good night!

haven't had an update of substance in a little bit, mainly due to being generally busy. still am, but just wanted to summarize the cool things i've been doing.

last last weekend (the one before memorial day), david, melinda, and i drove down to caltech for the dabney house drop day party. dabney house is the one david and melinda lived in when they were at caltech, so they wanted to go and join current darbs (?? i think that's the word, but i'm not sure) and alumns and i just tagged along. but it was fun and awesome and i even got to help with building cool tunnel things. so good times, except for the drive back. it poured most of the way and was generally stressful and make my back go completely bonkers.

last week i muddled through 4 days of work and then was off to an israeli folk dance camp for the long weekend! drove to la (again! heh) with tali, which was much fun. we were both a little loopy and very silly, so the drive wasn't too bad, even when we were stuck in traffic. met (unexpectedly) two people i knew from bci several years back, which was awesome. kevin arrived on saturday morning and i mainly hung out with him and tali and my bci friends for the rest of the weekend. much dancing, not much sleeping, but lots of fun. back still a bit mad at me, but hugely better.

this week i had work tuesday and yesterday and again today, which means i will sadly miss bab5. i could've gone last week, but got overwhelmed with packing. ah, well. i'm hosting next week, so i'll have to be there! this weekend will be slightly insane...doing stuff with friends tomorrow night, helping corey on saturday, babysitting my little little niece on sunday. much stuff, but should be fun. oh, and i found the dress i want to wear to the wedding i'm going to the weekend after this one! excitement!

ok, that is all for now. possibly, ranting to come later.

off to get lower wisdom teeth extracted. meep! i really want to go to bab5 today, but it will depend on my state. likely, i'll end up going and just be very quiet and cuddle with people. that should be nice.

anyhow, wish me luck! i'm freaked out re: general anesthesia, but hopefully i can have something else done, like consious sedation or something like that. we shall see.

elaine is tired.  not enough sleep, although i'm glad i went to bab5 yesterday.  it was nice to hang out with people, chat, and just lay around on a foof chair and be cuddled.  lots of head-scritching and general hugginess.  yay.  but then i had to get up super early today to deal with car stuff, and that was unhappy...both in the getting up early and in the actual dealing with it part.  not a fan of mechanics, especially ones who patronize me.  blah.  must bring my dad with me next time or something.  and now it's more hassle to deal with it all...rent a car, leave my car at shop, figure out insurance stuff.  meh.

on the bright side, my supervisor is going to talk to my pi (principal investigator) today and find a data set for me to present at a conference in november...the deadline for abstract submission is in 3 weeks, so i need to get started now.  yay!  exciting stuff!

ok, back to work.  thank goodness for weekend coming up.

i realize it isn't friday, but i forgot about this last week and figured i might as well catch up now. yes.
( random questions about teachers )

in other, non-related news, the nice lady at the va gift shop gave me a handful of dried cranberries when i came in to buy candy for the office. so nice! kinda the epitome of random acts of kindness.

ok, off to nik's place for dinner! yay!

when i went to the (very weird) VA giftshop that sells candy in little sealed ziplock-style bags, the lady who works there was slicing an apple for herself. after some small talk, she offered me a slice. it was one of those completely random, really sweet things to have done. yes.

in other news, weekend was vaguely nuts with family stuff, but now grandpa is back home! woohoo! he's still fuzzy, but there's hope that being at home will make that better. so yay.

had sleep setups at 10pm friday, saturday, and sunday...this was sad, but that's ok. more setups this week, thursday, friday, and saturday. at least i'm not working tomorrow. work is fun, though quite busy.

it's funny reading my friends' ljs...everyone is apologizing for being not social enough and too happy being couple-y, if there's such a thing as being too happy. i kinda feel the same way...it's a nice feeling, although i do need to get myself out and about more. i did go to bab5 last week, but it won't happen this week probably, because of work stuff. but yeah, life's good.

got a really good pep talk from my supervisor today...she's such a psychology person, in the best way. really knows how to be motivating without being over-the-top about it. i was feeling a little discouraged about work, since recruitment is being annoying and there are lots of little things that keep going wrong...and i know that it's to be expected, and these things kinda work themselves out, but it was bringing both me and the study coordinator down. and so our supervisor, who's the senior manager on all this, sat us down and talked to us and we were both re-energized and much happier about it all. so that's good.

setup yesterday went very late, 'cause the subject came to the hospital an hour and a half late. blah. today should be better, though, but i'm still missing dance. for the third week in a row. meh. annoyance, but what can i do?

went to the exploratorium with a whole lot of techie people on sunday, which was pretty awesome. it was quite amusing to watch them get engrossed by minute details of exhibits. much fun. sunday was also the birthday brunch for my little niece! she's such a doll! my sister and her husband dressed the baby up in a puffy little dress and put a bow on her head, and it was highly adorable. my older niece had a good time, too, and looked so pretty! so a good day.

saturday was mad cleaning day, because my parents visited my appartment. heh. but it went ok, and we went out to a nice dinner and all.

grandpa update: he varies from day to day. he's still in the rehab place, and some days he's better and some days he's worse. he's swallowing now, so we can feed him, but his parkinson's is giving him a lot of issues and he's pretty confused about stuff. but i'm trying to be hopeful, even when it's difficult.

everything's good with the boy, which makes me happy. it's nice to feel things getting more and more comfortable, you know? i'm excited for him with his job stuff, and just excited in general. good times.

on a random note, i really want to start an anonymous blog (meaning, not associated with me at all) and see if i can get readership on it, as a kind of experiment. i may even do it. heh. it just seems like it would be fun. i mean, how do anonymous bloggers get readers? it's easier on lj, with the communities and all. you can comment or post in a community, and people find out who you are, but how do you do it on a site like blogger, that doesn't have the same community feature? in any case, i might give it a try, branch away from lj a bit. we'll see.

ok, that's all...back to work.